Don’t Drink the Water
>> Friday, April 16, 2010
April 16, 2010 - 6:00 AM | by: Douglas Kennedy
“Don’t drink the water,” that’s what Oliver Outerbridge is telling his neighbors.
It’s ironic because Outerbridge is a restaurant owner in Portland, Maine-a state which has some of the best tasting drinking water in the country.
“We are literally consuming a toxic substance,” Outbridge said, “we are medicating everyone.”
His issue is obviously not the taste, but what Portland adds to its municipal water - fluoride.
“[Fluoride] causes multiple diseases,” he said. “It's been shown study after study to cause cancer as well as many other debilitating diseases.”
Outerbridge’s claims are echoed by anti-fluoride activists across the country, but are vehemently denied by most dentists and government scientists.
“There is absolutely no science to this,” said Edmond Hewlett, a spokesperson for the American Dental Association. “There is a preponderance of evidence on this,” Hewlett added. “Not only is [fluoride] safe, but it’s extremely effective in preventing tooth decay.”
What Hewlett can’t explain is why the anti-fluoride movement has recently gained such traction. In the last two years, dozens of communities in 10 states (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Kansas, Vermont, Washington, Maine, New York, Massachusetts, and California,) have rejected water-fluoridation.
Outerbridge points to the warning on the back of any fluoridated tooth-paste. “It says right there if you swallow more than a pee-size, contact poison control. This stuff is poison.”
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